Violets
by Amku
Summary: He waited far too long, but she stayed for him. Can he find redemption after her death? VxM severe angstdeath


I don't own any character on Trigun, but I do own a Vash plushie! Does that count? ......No?.....Oh okay, never mind then. On with the angst!.......SEVERE ANGST!!!  
  
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She stared down at her hands for what seemed to be the hundredth time that day. There was no longer any point to move, to breathe, to live.  
  
Sixty years had passed. There was no sign of him... at all. She had gotten old, now in her eighties, and what did she have to show for it? Nothing. Just an old house full of once-happy memories turned to grains of sand in the wind, and as the rest of the world moved on she still waited. She waited for him.   
  
How many times had he laughed somewhere far, far away while she sat all alone in the house that once had held all three of them? How many women had he made passes at while she never looked away from his fading image in her mind? How many times did he even think of her?...None. She knew...and she felt even more alone because of it.  
  
Millie left and got married. She didn't blame her...it was just so quiet after everyone was gone. Millie had begged her to come with her, but she simply declined. 'I don't want to be a bother to anyone. Besides, I'm still waiting,' she remembered her response to her friend's imploring and the sad, sad smile she got in return. Millie had three children, two boys and a girl, and even grandchildren--four lovely boys and five girls. She sighed and bowed her head as a silent tear seeped between her tightly shut eyelids and a choked sob tore past her lips.   
  
Sometimes she liked to pretend that everything was just as it had been when all four of them had been together, and everyone was happy. But now she realized how foolish she had been all along. There were no sweet reunions for her. Only the cold lonely bed and typewriter awaited her every night.  
  
She had been writing letters every night for three years now. Some to her family, some to Milly, but most of them were to him-although, she never sent them to the last. She simply stored them in a box with the rest of her memories.   
  
She always remembered how her mother would tell her that there was always one special someone for everyone. She had found hers, but he...wasn't coming back now. She didn't know when he had first left that he wouldn't return. She honestly believed in him and put all of her trust and heart into him, but now she saw how stupid she had been all along. It had taken her sixty years for her eyes to open to the truth that he had never intended on coming back to her.   
  
She got up slowly from her chair on the front porch that had become her daily watch post for the years of past and walked into her house. She sat down to her typewriter with tears still dripping from her eyes and wrote her last letter.   
  
She pulled the finished sheet of paper out of the machine and folded it with shaking hands before opening her box. She kissed the letter and laid it inside. Closing the box, she walked over to her bed and lay down, pulling the covers up to her chin.  
  
Silent tears escaped her eyes and as she looked around her room she could see the past so clearly. His face, his smile...his real smile... and his eyes. She gasped at the color, so beautiful and sea-swept aqua. She felt her eyes droop and her last breath escape her thin lips, which now dropped from the smile that they had been curled into.   
  
~*~  
  
He sat down at the bar counter and sighed. It'd been such a long day.   
  
"Really? So they just found her there?" he overheard a conversation between two boys who appeared to be about twenty-three or so.   
  
"Yeah, she'd only been...gone, for about an hour or so is what dad said. Grandma Millie was so sad when we found her."  
  
"God... Poor Miss Meryl...and Grandma had traveled all that way to see her, too," the brown-headed boy shook his head. Vash instantly perked at the name and felt his heart drop all the way to his stomach, 'She's...Dead?'  
  
It seemed logical enough seeing how long it had been, but just hearing it... He felt huge pangs of regret and tears prickled his eyes as he forced himself to concentrate to what the boys were saying.  
  
"Yea... She wasn't that bad, you know, although we didn't see her often. She hardly ever even left that old house."   
  
"I know... Did you guys clean out her house already? Where did you bury her?" Vash closed his eyes. Just hearing those words made him feel like he was going to throw up.  
  
"Grandma said that we should bury her out near the house, that that's where she would have wanted to be buried. We pretty much left everything in the house except for a few things that Grandma had wanted to keep to remember her by. She was going to take Miss Meryl's trunk with her, but she left it there because 'Meryl would want it to stay there, just in case,' as Grandma had said."   
  
"What did she mean by that?" the other boy shrugged in response. "Well, anyway, I was talking to Melissa the other day about that trip and we were wondering..."   
  
The boys' conversation faded away and Vash stood up, exiting the bar. Parts of the conversation picked away at his brain-"She'd only been...gone, for about an hour or so", "Where did you bury her?"  
  
"God..." Vash bit his lower lip and kept walking. Her town had only been thirty iles away, why didn't he ever even visit her? 'I was scared...Scared of what might happen between us...' He felt his hands grip themselves into tight fists as he passed by the last buildings before entering the vast stretches of empty desert.   
  
He walked till late in the mid-night hours before he finally reached the town of his destination and another half an hour or so till he reached the small house on the far outskirts of it. He looked at the dim house before opening the front door and entering the dark abandoned house that he hadn't been in for what seemed to be ages. Everything looked almost exactly the same as he remembered it in the dim moonlight that streamed through the window.   
  
Everything seemed so surreal. It didn't even register that she was gone. He could almost swear that when he walked into her room that she would be sitting at her desk typing away and turn to glare at him before asking, "What do you want, Broom Head?" He thought that that thought would make him smile, but instead it only made him ache more, because as he entered her room, wishing it to be brightened by her presence, it was only dark and cold...and empty. So empty...  
  
A tear fell down his cheek, and he walked to her trunk and opened it up to find several stacks of letters. He pulled out the stacks and found a candle and some matches to read by. One by one he opened each letter and read it.   
  
"I miss you."  
  
"Please, come home."  
  
"I'm lonely."  
  
"I'll always wait for you..."  
  
"...I love you."  
  
Each line, especially the last, pierced his brain and his strangled sobs cut through the silence of the empty house. He read every single letter, the tears never stopping once they began.   
  
He stood up, feeling totally drained. He walked out of the house and out to the back to where there stood a small wooden cross and a dozen dead roses. Vash fell to his knees with a hard thud, his tears pouring freely. He pressed his hands onto the freshly dug soil, his fingers tensing at the warm ground below him. "I came back, Meryl. I'm sorry it took me so long, I missed you, too." Violets began to sprout up around his hands, but he continued to talk. "See? You waited so long, but I did, too. I was just scared, I'm sorry." More flowers came up as his vision began to blur. "I was selfish. I never thought of what this was doing to you. Forgive me," he whimpered as he felt his energy start to dither. The warmth increased under his hands and he smiled before collapsing, "I love you, too..."   
  
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Well, that's it! Agh! So sad! What's my problem!? Oh well, I enjoyed writing it I guess...so, so sad! Please review! I appreciate it!   
  
Decoy 


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